Many times, a wandering soul will gain personal momentary comfort from the well-spoken hypothesis that it is indeed good to be lost and undecided in settled knowledge of the future, because all interesting souls have traced similar paths, and unsettling spirits must experience unsettling situations to feel the proper ecstasy required for top-notch work and high-end productivity.

The process is indeed, torturous. Lost amidst the high-rises of fragmented obstacles, and looking for that polygon of fresh air, in-between the upwards looking of heavenly gaps – it is the act of looking up towards the sky within the chaos of a foreign 5th Avenue, where the ground-view shot is a totally different story than the angled shooting towards the lower atmospheric pressures. Sometimes, it makes me wonder, how interesting the topic of “public open urban sky” would be; here, you never get one honest view of the whole, but bits and pieces of sky, discovered unexpectedly in different shapes and with different tones of tightening. One cannot claim this to be beautifully organic, but only nightmare-mysterious. It’s because you cannot grasp the interior function of every single building layer, and because the sky is not a true umbrella to your head. Reality is scattered in pieces, and it would take only a desensitized machine to feel comfortable and belonging. Or one who loves puzzles that have never been touched in order to be completed. Unless life is the analogy of a jenga game, and then everything starts to form some senseless logic.

Is this why every man, at some point in his life, needs to pass through and live in this city? To understand what? That happiness remains a non-true reality that may be ‘illusioned’ only through vertical protrusions towards the skies? To feel higher and greater than what a single individual is truly worth? Is it really all about collective power and the sociological mission towards cultural excellence on specific projects and tasks? Too massive. Too much invisibility going on…

My colleague Ilija Gubic (situated – through the United Nations – in Manila, Philippines), and I (situated – through me – in Thessaloniki, Greece), are writing a paper on some post disaster processes, and as I was glancing on the first rough draft, ready to further our research and speculative findings, I misread my chapter of “The psychological security of historicity” as “The psychological security of hypocricity” which word (hypocricity) does not really exist, but nevertheless was totally fit to the present condition of far-fetched hopes and ambitions, seeming completely right to the eye and the ear. And the gut instinct.

Hypocrisy, is the correct word, of course.

Inevitably leading to the sociological need for ‘polite hypocrisy’. Take the Greek climate, for example: The air is so indescribably fresh and sunny and the views so benevolently aspiring, yet the impenetrable wall that one faces in pursuit of striding through life in meaningful and marvelous amplitude and rapidity, scatters when faced with the armature of sole dependence and meritocratic hope. Is making it pure luck, or pure persistence, or both?

Time is so precious, and relying on pure persistence is purely unfair. Of course, through history, millions have stated life not to be equitable, yet a million more have stated mottos and sayings about dreams, goals, positive thinking and eventual success. Those who write about it in a questionable fashion, have been thought to be the doubters and inane thinkers; digging through their presumed failure to rise above. Isn’t that so?

In any case, my generation statistically holds the shorter side of the stick, and the hills we have to trespass are far rockier than what they used to be. (Even though I despise statistics especially when faced with the necessary romantic alternative of dream-hunting !)

Is this (short stick) why more people have set out to run on mountains and experience the physical and mental suffering of breath shortage, burning muscles, and fatiguing limbs while surrounded by the insecurity of nature’s unpredictability and roughness? Because the allegory of life has given them the solid reference point to endure more than they once used to?

The psychological security of hypocrisy is what one brings out, or what one wishes to have been, while thinking and feeling otherwise. One finds it in ‘friends’, in all types of relationships, and at times, within one’s self. Security, above all, for survival.

I say no, because insecurity is better fit. Striving above and outside comfort zones. Risking. Looking for higher energy levels, even if they only exist in one’s mind as yet an abstract hypothesis of possibility. That’s maybe how to move forward, and how a land maybe eventually becomes as beautiful and as addicting as it in fact looks.

If hypocrisy is security, which seems to be, I suggest to start running some mountains. But be sure to make it down again.

Τhe following review first appeared in (The East) Architect’s Newspaper, Vol.14, 12.04.2013, pp.21-22

By Stefanie Leontiadis

In pursuit of an inventive and flexible interpretation of Freshkills Park’s damaged land and its recovery of health and biodiversity, together with the intent to trigger the imagination of people, the Land Art Generator Initiative hosted the competition “Regenerative Infrastructures.” The results of the competition are featured in the book Regenerative Infrastructures: Freshkills Park NYC, Land Art Generator Initiative. The projects include a variety of proposals including visiting-tours, on-site events, educational programs, installations, performances, scientific environmental research, and the expanding definition of the park that challenge the terminologies of public art, urban landscapes, and sustainable structures and technologies.

The introductory essays lay down the Land Art Generator theoretical opinions on sustainable land art considerations, covering topics on aesthetics in sustainability, the contemporary issue of garbage-production, the artist’s role, and the relationship between landscape and infrastructure.

The extreme articulation of land art, which came to being in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, where the designer interprets the direct linkage between landscape and project, is expressed in this competition through various sources of inspiration. This artful process reminds one of the epistemological relevance of the ground playing a significant role of a constant in the equation of the Earth’s complex stability, similar to the formulation of the Gaia hypothesis of the 1970s by chemist James Lovelock, taking place parallel to the phenomenological investigations and new-expressionism. The Gaia hypothesis considers the treatment of the ground as a point of reference of a self-organizing system, where each particle that is being placed becomes strongly affected by its behavior. This doesn’t refrain much from the complexity theory of the same period of post-modernism, where qualities of architectural open space compositions were trying to find deeper values of linkages among forms, themes and aesthetic ideas, investigating multivalent relationships of many meanings.

This evolution of ideas becomes supremely relevant to the Regenerative Infrastructures projects, which try to use every installation piece for the production of renewable energy. A noteworthy example could very well be the winner of the competition, “Scene-Sensor//Crossing Social and Ecological Flows”, which uses piezoelectric generators to harvest energy from the wind and the visiting humans, employing the form of an attractive screen and the metaphorical concept of mirroring and reflection in the actual experience of the final solution.

The intensions of land art were initially a movement of disapproval towards the modern developing movement of machinery, artificiality, plastic aesthetics, and commercialized architecture. Pursuing natural simplicity through concepts of minimalism, geometrical simplicity and organic expressionism, the movement initially spread in Europe, with works usually positioned in the country-side, intended to reveal their pure concept from a bird’s eye view. With the Regenerative Infrastructures of Freshkills Park, one sees the progress, not only in the sense of sustainability, but also in the partaking in the traces of the memories of the urban ground, offering experiences of subconscious investigation. Ideally, the land art figures follow existing patterns of the land, being traced as blueprints in quest of creating memories of past existed contours.

Dimitris Pikionis, of the same generation as Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, delves deeply into the investigation of this groundscape and topographical sensibility, associating the designs with the direct interaction of the being with the “glyptic form of the site”.[i] This very glyptic over-design of the site’s topography is evident in Regenerative Infrastructure projects such as “Fresh Hills”, “99 Red Balloons” and “Currents”, to name a few. But also Aldo van Eyck’s interpretation of the Amsterdam playgrounds are a pure expression of this phenomenon, translating the morphological characteristics of the place into playground objects laid out on the outline of a cement grid. In the Freshkills Park projects, using the topography as the blueprint layer, this happens with the “PowerPlay” proposal, a “sculpturally stimulating and energy-generating interactive kinetic play-space”.

Both of Pikionis’ and van Eyck’s theories combined, translate to some of these projects’ solution of touching and the sensory perception of the child searching for elementary signs traced on the ground, and punctuated through a rediscovery of landscape obstacles that absorb and distribute energy.

The interplay of the proposals takes various forms, including solar loop landmarks, the minimal element of the line, triangles representing natural healing, cylindrical energy collectors, bird-forms, panels, mechanical ghosts, kites, arching frames, rods as generators, three-legged modules, clouds, gas molecule forms expressed under high pressure, natural-looking elements of stems and blooms, trees, currents, and inflatable roofs.s They are all valid solutions for contemporary situations of a landscape of historical importance, in the midst of a strong topographical imagery. The sources of inspiration for this imagery are also rich and inspiring, including-window reflecting and revealing scenes, the relationship between energy and land, the aligning on the moving condition of the landfill’s gradual sinking and the rising of the surrounding level, the expression of loss/hope/memory, interactive kinetic play-space, the bond between humans and the park, a bird’s wing movement, the revelation of process of power generation, a kite’s or flower’s or tree’s metaphor….

The book concludes with a comprehensive glossary explaining all of the mentioned energy technologies used for every project, completing the figurative character of the new landscape imagery.

Conclusively, it is a book that flirts among phenomenological facts of reality, illusion and technology, transcending objects and sceneries into multiple layers of meanings, while offering symbolic advice.

ricerca prattica creativa

The following was a presentation for an interview as a candidate (one of 5 finalists) for the ADAPT-r Call for Experienced Researcher in Creative Practice Research (FP7 Marie Curie), taking place in Brussels, Belgium (July 8th, 2013).

This journey is an architectural and artful research in finding ways to illustrate the perception of public open spaces in the urban environments, through two and three dimensional illustrations, based on theoretical analysis of space design evolution.

Early in my architectural studies and through master projects in the United States, I took interest in the perception of an idea through its expressive form […]

[…] leading me to work on a masters thesis expressed through the programmatic theme of an International Home for Video Game playing, […]

[…] situated in Hawaii – the middle point between the Californian haven for this topic, and the Japanese nucleus of technological innovation. On an island that perceives multiple images of fictional paradise and architectural innovation, […]

[…] I took pleasure in sketching and painting through experimentation of the wave form, the structural sequencing that a video game withholds, and the evolution of an organic line; […]

[…] arriving to three dimensional mini-sculptural experimentations of this evolution, and developing the final design primarily through hand modeling, which I find a genuinely intimate experience of space formation.

The building, playfully found its place next to the urban seaside of Honolulu.

The progressive floor plans expressed the dislocation of mental imagination that a video game creates, allowing one to perceive views below (through transparent one-way flooring), and keeping the proceeding levels a total mystery. Simulating the video game experience of moving up unknown levels, withholding the memory of the process, […]

[…] while externally creating the impression and expression of a sci-fi structure of organically logical movement and adventure.

A large concern was also the structural affiliation of concept and materiality also through the use of expressive steel and titanium sheets, through a sequential structure, […]

[…] and of course the three dimensional contextual perception within the urban environment.

At around that time, and after the contemplation of this official start of my creative architectural research journey, I found myself in Thessaloniki of Greece, searching to make connections between the fine arts, and my newly perceived architectural research passion relating to the progression of science and the understanding of our fixed and obscure surroundings.

The perceptual expression of human portraits has been triggering my interest ever since, and it worked parallel to this research, on multiple levels, helping with my perception of places and objects, and their illustrative expression.

Oscar Wilde said rightly so that every portrait is an expression of the artist, and not of the sitter, and so to learn how to perceive and illustratively represent, one must understand things better for oneself.

So before the courses resumed at the Mediterranean College, where I was teaching at that time, I took a one week trip to Florence, […]

[…] spending many many hours visiting the different galleries, perceiving others’ perceptions on human expression […]

[…] and duplicating the sculptural pieces that decorated the urban home.

Upon my return, my fresh experiences offered a new understanding that still had to be investigated. Italy had become inspiring, and I was instinctively led to apply for doctoral studies at the Politecnico di Milano, suggesting Civic Art as my nucleus-topic of interest.

I received a first place international scholarship in the department of Urban and Architectural Design, beginning a strong cycle of experimental research, participation in international workshops, and conference presentations across Europe.

A groundbreaking two-week workshop in Bergamo found me making paintings for the expression and understanding of urban limits and intervals […]

[…] for the definition of public open urban spaces […]

[…] in the process of creating an urban and architectural design through the expression of positional values, urban facts, public elements, […]

[…] the use of paths, matrices and perceptual studies of the vertical layers – all of which started to define concepts for my final thesis dissertation on the syntax of the public open urban space.

Other key concepts involved the construction and use of visual characteristics and expression, which helped me enhance my portrait speculations, […]

[…] also through the investigation of expressional movement through space.

This movement of an expanding urban expression transferred over to another workshop on the expanding peripheral illustrations of the public open urban spaces of south-western Milan […]

[…] in which I initiated the study by seeking to illustrate the expanding voids, greens, built space, and different neighborhood districts, […]

[…] combining the findings with the superimpositions of historical maps on built and infrastructural expansion […]

[…] while deepening the analysis on a selected historically strong line of the Naviglio strip, […]

[…] contemplating on the ideational function of a space and the degree of perceptual safety […]

[…] through the definition of ‘bound’ and ‘unbound’ spaces […]

[…] where in the first case one feels restricted and smothered within the urban context […]

[…] and in the other case one might feel vulnerable or free.

Next, I visited a specific public square, Tirana, […]

[…] seeking to illustrate its perceptual feel through diagrams and sequential visual schemes. This was the beginning of my ongoing interest of on-field perceptual investigation.

A further step was the workshop on the redevelopment of Placa de les Glories Catalanes in Barcelona, illustrating important keywords […]

[…] on the layering of city ruins, traces and signs, […]

[…] the definition and two dimensional representations of nodes, […]

[…] and the presence of an axis, of joint networks, and transit spaces.

The progressive incorporation of all the analytic schemes led to the contemplated design of […]

[…] a master plan and architectural project of a multi-use complex program […]

[…] that creates perceptual dialogues with the other high-rises through the interplay of vertical and horizontal circulation.

This project was the beginning of the investigation of the sign, […]

[…] and the parallel creation of works of more semiotic meanings;

yet still experimenting with the pure expression of portraiture art.

From Milano, I went to Thessaloniki for a one-week workshop with George Hargreaves from London, to experiment with illustrations on the definition of an ecological corridor, working on urban sustainability.

I took what I learned form the Italian workshops to superimpose historical and evolutional maps of the city’s structure, […]

[…] to understand the sense of shifting, the changing of urban morphologies, […]

[…] and the meaning of forces of ‘degeneration’, ‘permanence’ and ‘transformation’.

The design expressed the hybridization of natural and cultural systems on an interconnected scale, […]

[…] considering instrumental land forms, flood flows, pedestrian movement and the formative processes of the site.

Therefore, perceptual understanding took a deeper dimension also in art, through more profound anatomical expression that perhaps also reflected through portraiture expression.

Most importantly, urban perception started to take its illustrative form, founding the base for my doctoral thesis and true genuine interest, […]

[…] where I wandered through all the public open urban spaces of Milano, seeking to find two dimensional illustrative means of three dimensional perceptual and semiotic schemes, expressing specific clues […]

[…] that to my eyes, blended architecture and nature through cerebral moments of monochrome visions […]

[…] expressed through orienting paths and mirror images of interpretation (similar to Oscar Wilde’s writings on portraiture expression, and the importance of the artist’s understanding on what he sees).

(At times, I wondered what would happen if I inverted my point of view in the color-sense, and while doing this, the result never fails to fascinate me).

Gathering these experiences, I decided to concentrate my research on perceptual understanding of spaces;

titling the thesis; The Architecture of Public Open Urban Space;

How to Define a Syntax in the Contemporary Urban Environment;

The goal was to understand the structural evolution of the public space since modernity, and create syntactic representations and suggestions for new design interventions.

The completed work is split into three parts; Theoretical, Analytical and Experimental. The theory is based on fundamental bibliography of the milanese school on urban and architectural design to form a basis of keywords, […]

[…] through the investigation of art in relation to the public open urban space […]

[…] and space syntax in the contemporary urban environment;

through the theoretical points of view of critical figures, on space perception as an artistic means, […]

[…] signs and symbolism, […]

[…] land art and earthworks, […]

[…] perceptual security […]

[…] urban perception in pieces of art, […]

[…] layers of spatial composition and their meaning, […]

[…] information availability and open space minimalism, […]

[…] structure, framing and the ‘logic of the limit’, […]

[…] field perception, […]

[…] object relationships, […]

[…] concept and theme, […]

[…] the role of the ground, […]

[…] salience and articulation, […]

[…] and orientation and path.

The second and analytical part, deals with schemes on the paradigmatic shift of public open urban space design that took place from 1951 in the CIAM8 Congress of Hoddesdon, and progressing with the Team 10 designs until 1966, […]

[…] studying syntactic elements of organizing typologies, […]

[…] elements of boundaries and framing, […]

[…] orientation, […]

[…] field perception, […]

[…] framing, […]

[…] structure and path, […]

[…] the influence and redesign of the infrastructure, […]

[…] and the superimposition of layerings.

These schemes form extractions of a theoretical framework of the public open urban spaces that continued to take shape throughout modernity, […]

[…] in search of new vocabularies of space communication […]

[…] and thematic strength of design.

Through these, there is an evolutional understanding of the repeating keywords of salience and articulation, orientation and path, […]

[…] infrastructure, […]

[…] framing, […]

[…]

[…] layering, structure, field, ground, and space articulation.

The next step became the contemplation of these words when dealing with interventions in historical places, in which I found myself all the time -

and being located in Milano, helped me through this process… as I circulated by bicycle along all the perimetric infrastructural rings of the central city, studying in person and intimately one by one, all the public open urban spaces, […]

[…]… to define perceptual structures, […]

[…] visual boundaries […]

[…] and vectors of compositional values.

The schemes serve the purposes of density and tension studies in relation to the surrounding elements […]

[…] and in visual interpretation of shape and certain levels of character.

The conclusion may lead one to start categorizing towards the definition of spaces of mobilization, expanded spaces, fragmented spaces, or spaces that start to lose a defined center. This helps clarify between the organic or spontaneous formation of the civic space, establish a degree of geometric rigor, and offer new interpretations of urban coherence and order.

A similar study but with different interpretative diagrams was done for the Thissio Park in Athens […]

[…] expressing the ground as a sculptural means of strong morphological features that take leadership in reference to the visual fields of this historical area, […]

[…] finding synthetic methods of a self-organizing system where each particle is affected by its behavior and its deeper semiotic significance.

The final project is a synthesis of the doctoral thesis investigations, demonstrating a methodology of design for the expression of civic art as a mosaic of cultures.

The site, falling on the perimeter of a greater open public ring, represents the continuation of a mosaic of open public spaces, forming dwellings for the visitors.

The main challenge was to draw a structural basis from the surrounding morphology and system of urban compositions.

Dealing with a synthetic, and yet repetitious structure, the goal was to create open public spaces based on a unified structural logic, […]

[…] (an experimentation that started mainly through three dimensional hand-modeling) […]

[…] later progressing into a fixed architecture of a circulation system that incorporates playful ‘mental sets’ of diagonally vertical penetrations.

This is best illustrated through three dimensional wire-frame perception of the design, and transparent vision of what hides underneath, beneath, and through a set of spaces.

This means of illustration is conclusive to the research on layering and transparency of a space’s history and structure […]

[…] which a visitor should be able to grasp, while walking through, and the architect should understand, when designing further interventions, for a more successful urban implementation.

Similar to how the understanding and illustration of human anatomy… […]

… […] helps through the better expression of feelings and emotional perception in art.

When one understands the essence of human motion and behavior, a more artful expression of the universe takes place.

No matter where our adventurous practice evolves at each moment;

and regardless the subjects (or objects) of focus.

Sometimes situations become more challenging […]

[…] as in my latest research work of promoting the South-Eastern European cultural route of 20th century Architecture of Totalitarian Regimes.

In pursuit of the economic valorization of architecture built during dictatorship rule, I studied deeper on sustainable growth, and heritage semiosis, iconographic decumentation and multi dimensional perception […]

[…] to justify these entities’ Beings and evolutionary process. This very memory expression is the four dimensionality of space perception […]

[…] that is practiced through the identification, collection and digital cataloging of objects relating to these buildings, […]

[…] including intangible heritage collection such as furniture and clothing, […]

[…] and always seeking to spread the knowledge for the understanding of this challenging period through architectural monuments.

Challenging perceptions helped me express in a more enigmatic way my perception on unresolved matters […]

[…] where the image of something might hide a different meaning of what we initially perceive, similar to Luigi Pirandello’s speculations on the mask that we all instinctively wear in everyday society.

Where persons might be less, or more than what they appear […]

[…] and where even anatomical schemes may show us two different sides of meaning and function.

The perception of a simple shape may become synthetic and show us something new, even through partly monochrome vision […]

[…] while the same shape may lead one to perceive even a whole story.

Through the constant search, extraction and expression of structural configurations […]

[…] there will always be interesting expressions of perception in art […]